A former Canadian envoy whose imprisonment in China kicked off a high-profile diplomatic spat has accused Chinese authorities of inflicting “psychological torture” on him.
Michael Kovrig says he was placed in solitary confinement for months and subjected to “relentless interrogation” when he was arrested in December 2018 and held for more than 1,000 days.
Yup https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/21/canada-intelligence-program-danger-report-china-detention and Spavor was unwittingly being used by Kovrig for information gathering.
Goddamn! I just read the article. This hullabaloo really looked like naked hostage diplomacy at the time as the allegations sounded too convenient to be true. Actually both could be true - China could have known about these two and not cared till they had use for them. Still our (Canadian) authorities really made it sound the allegations were bullshit.
Meanwhile the reason China did use them was freaking insane. Can you imagine China arresting the CEO of Microsoft or BlackBerry? Two companies that for sure absolutely collaborate with western governments either by inserting backdoors or by giving them early access to zero days… Unpopular opinion here, but China is the rational actor in this affair.
Yes I would have also enjoyed if they arrested a western CEO instead of these patsies. The show would have been quite something. 😂